Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Wyoming wolf hunt begins

14 hours ago • Christine Peterson
Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune

Anyone interested in the number of wolves killed in the trophy game area can call the wolf hotline at 1-800-264-1280.

CASPER, Wyo. | Fritz Meyer was guiding outside of Dubois when
Wyoming wolf licenses went on sale in early September. The next day, he
bought one. He doesn’t plan on hunting wolves specifically, but if one
comes across his path and the quota hasn’t been filled for his area,
he’d shoot.
Meyer isn’t the only one.

The state’s first wolf
hunting season begins today in northwest Wyoming, and as of Friday
afternoon, 2,236 licenses had been sold. Wyoming residents purchased the
bulk of the licenses, and Park County residents bought the largest
number of any county, said Brian Nesvik, chief of the wildlife division
of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

Fifty-two wolves can be
hunted in this year’s season, which ends Dec. 31. Wolves outside of the
trophy management area can now be shot on sight.
Hunters must report a wolf kill in the trophy area within 24 hours. Once the quota is filled, the season closes.

The chances of actually shooting a wolf are akin to winning the lottery, Meyer said.
“If
I get a wolf or not I don’t really care. It’s really hard to go hunt
one,” he said. “Wolves are very smart and crafty, and they move a lot at
night.”

Meyer spends most days in the woods as an outfitter,
trapper, hunter and snowmobiler. He finds tracks and other signs, but in
the past year, he’s only seen three wolves.
Once people start shooting at wolves, they will become even more elusive, he said.

Most
people who bought tags are likely elk, deer or other big game hunters
who want the opportunity to shoot a wolf if they see one, Nesvik said.

Elk
and deer hunters shot 78 percent of the wolves killed during Montana’s
2009 wolf hunt, according to a survey by Montana Fish, Wildlife and
Parks.

People also didn’t have time to plan for a Wyoming wolf
hunt. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced its decision to
remove Wyoming wolves from the endangered species list in late August.
Some people may have bought tags simply for the novelty of buying a wolf hunting license in Wyoming, Nesvik said.

He can’t predict how many wolves will be killed this fall.
Montana
set its first wolf hunt quota at 75 wolves and 72 were killed by the
close of the season, according to state’s wildlife department.

At
least 10 wolves were killed in less than two weeks in Wyoming’s predator
management area when wolves were briefly delisted in April 2008,
according to Star-Tribune archives.

Under Wyoming’s wolf management plan, the state will be divided into three sections:
The
trophy game area is the northwest corner of the state outside of
Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, the John D.
Rockefeller Memorial Parkway, the National Elk Refuge and the Wind River
Indian Reservation.

A seasonal trophy area runs south of the
regular trophy area along the western border. Wolves are a trophy animal
from Oct. 15 to the end of February and a predator the rest of the
year.

Wolves are predators in the rest of the state and can be
shot on sight. In December, wildlife officials estimated that Wyoming
had about 220 to 230 wolves. Another estimate will be made this
December.
The state is required to keep a minimum of 10 breeding
pairs and 100 wolves outside of Yellowstone and the Wind River
Reservation.

Conservation groups filed a letter with the Fish and
Wildlife Service when the delisting ruling was published outlining their
intent to sue, said Jenny Harbine, an attorney for Earthjustice, a
non-profit law firm representing the groups.

The organizations —
Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for
Biologic Diversity and the Sierra Club — must wait until early November
before going to court to challenge the ruling.

The film offers an abbreviated history of the relationship between wolves and people—told from the wolf’s perspective—from a time when they coexisted to an era in which people began to fear and exterminate the wolves.

The return of wolves to the northern Rocky Mountains has been called one of America’s greatest conservation stories. But wolves are facing new attacks by members of Congress who are gunning to remove Endangered Species Act protections before the species has recovered.

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Inescapably, the realization was being borne in upon my preconditioned mind that the centuries-old and universally accepted human concept of wolf character was a palpable lie... From this hour onward, I would go open-minded into the lupine world and learn to see and know the wolves, not for what they were supposed to be, but for what they actually were.

-Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf

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“If you look into the eyes of a wild wolf, there is something there more powerful than many humans can accept.” – Suzanne Stone